Patel, Bongino Try To Win Trust Of Skeptical FBI Agents

Before they took control of the FBI, its two top leaders, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, were some of the agency’s most rabid critics, attacking it for years. Now that they are running the agency, the two men have pulled a kind of bait-and-switch: In emails to thousands of employees, they have sought to use the bureau’s damaged reputation — a reputation that they helped tear down — as a rationale for bringing reforms to the supposedly broken organization, reports the New York Times “Over the past few years, the FBI's reputation has been damaged in the eyes of our employers, the American people,” Patel wrote. “I know each of you, serving across this great nation, are tackling cases that will further the betterment of the communities in which you live and work. ...Times of change can be uneasy, but they are necessary ... Business as usual is no longer business as usual."

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Patel’s email described what many agents believed they have been doing all along, even before he took control of the bureau: Investigating possible violations of federal laws. They say that nothing has changed since Patel took the helm, though they are deeply worried about the current leadership and whether the bureau will tackle cases that could lead to a clash with the White House. The email seemed like a tacit acknowledgment that Patel was trying to do more to win the trust and loyalty of his skeptical subordinates. Bongino wrote a similar letter to the staff, saying he would set “aside any personal politics” and he would not act as a “partisan political figure.” Luke William Hunt, a University of Alabama professor and a former FBI agent who testified Wednesday before a congressional subcommittee examining the bureau, said Bongino’s comments were a stretch of the imagination. “‘Disregard everything I said,’” Hunt said. “‘I am now a straight shooter.’ That’s laughable. It would be foolish or naïve to believe a statement like that. You’re asking an F.B.I. agent, who looks at the evidence, to believe that everything that is on print or on video is not representative of who they are.”